I had agreed to meet a fellow ARCC cyclist - Carl Akers @ Water Meadow Car Park in Chesham for an 8:00am start as we intended to ride over to Gt. Missenden to join the Sunday morning ride with the Amersham Cycling Club.

On the previous evening I met up with David Lowbridge as I knew that we had some new ARCC Club Kit in stock and I was keen to get my hands on my new bib shorts and short-sleeved summer top.

This was going to be my last long ride in preparation for the Chiltern 100 Gran Fondo scheduled for the following weekend. It looked like it was going to be a reasonable day despite the slightly gloomy weather predictions and as I started to leave the house I looked up at the sky and thought we might just get a shower or two so I decided to go back inside and pick up my shower mac which I duly folded and packed into the rear centre pocket of my new jersey - little did I know what a touch of good fortune that would be.

As I stared my descent down Nashleigh Hill (I always think it's great to live at the top of a Hill of course until you have ridden for several hours and then still have to go up one last hill before you get home) I could feel the cool morning air on my face as I stared to effortlessly accelerate down towards the bottom of the hill. As I approached the bottom of the hill I noticed a car that had stopped on the other side of the road waiting to make a right turn and a runner who was making her way slowly across the road junction and starting to make her accent. Within what seemed like a fraction of a second the car driver made the decision that it would now be safe to make the right hand turn as the runner had safely crossed the junction.

Unfortunately the driver had seriously mis-calculated the speed that I was approaching and the vehicle was now directly in front of me. I had absolutely no time to alter my trajectory and I immediately hit the mini side on placing a sizeable dent to the rear nearside of the vehicle. I don't recall exactly what happened next other than I knew I had struck the car hard and the next thing I knew I was travelling through the air and heading for some serious road rash, as I hit the deck my head, back, and predominantly the right side of my body took the full brunt of the impact.

I had been travelling close to 30mph (on later inspection of my Garmin it confirmed the speed of impact was 29.4mph/47.31 km/ph) and as you can imagine you tend to roll a bit when travelling at that speed with nothing between you and the tarmac other than some new ARCC Lycra.

Thankfully the runner (I think her name was Emma) immediately came to my aid as I struggled to get back on to my feet and off the busy road, i had been severely winded and I was simply unable to catch my breath and get back up off the ground. As is typical in these situations for a cyclist my immediate thoughts turned to what damage had I done to my bike, helmet and other kit never mind my personal injuries.

The next few minutes went past in a bit of a blur as Emma continued to give me support until a trained medical response unit had arrived at the roadside. Within ten minutes I had an Ambulance, a mobile response vehicle and two police cars at the scene! Thankfully I was not admitted to hospital although I had spent nearly 40 minutes being attended to in the back of the Ambulance prior to be given a lift back up to the top of the hill where I lived.

That was probably the shortest and most painful bike ride I have ever been on, I had travelled 320 metres down hill 310 on the bike and 10 metres on my backside.

However, I still believe that you should always look on the positive side of life and I realise that I have been extremely lucky to come away from an incident like this with only a few scratches and bruises and i only need to turn my mind back a couple of weeks and think of a fellow cyclist who was far less fortunate than myself the Team Leopard rider Wouter Weylandt of Belgium.

I am now having to deal with the thorny issue of claiming some form of compensation from the motorist insurance company and trying to make the decision as to whether it is safe to continue to ride on my beloved Trek carbon fibre frame.

Mark Simpson (Medway Velo) has sent me this very interesting YouTube clip of an ultrasound test on a carbon fork that had been in a crash.

Visually it looked fine but it was in fact starting to delaminate on the inside.

Alex Pepper 1st June 2011